Steroid users seen twice as prone to violence

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Young men who use anabolic steroids are twice as likely to engage in violence than those who do not use the muscle-building drugs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

While many scientists believe anabolic steroids -- synthetic drugs related to male sex hormones -- are linked to aggressive behaviour, research has been limited. Some users refer to so-called "roid rage" fuelled by the drugs.

"We're finding that steroid users are more likely to become violent, even above and beyond their prior levels of violence," said Kevin Beaver of Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, whose study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.

"That would tend to suggest that there is something about steroid use that increases violence," Beaver said in a telephone interview.

Beaver's team looked at data on a nationally representative sample of 6,823 young men who were tracked from 1994, when they were in middle school or high school, through to 2002.

The men who used anabolic steroids either in the past year or at any time in their lives were about twice as likely to have committed at least one violent act in the past year than men who never used them -- even when statistically accounting for other drug use or prior violent tendencies, Beaver said.

The violence included fights, shootings, stabbings or injuring another person badly enough to need medical attention. The men reported their own drug use and violence.

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